by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, November 12, 2003 2:37 P.M. EST

The Dems' Rearguard Action
For the past eight months, Senate Democrats have been using a procedure called a cloture vote to keep certain judicial nominees from coming to a vote on the Senate floor. Cloture formally ends debate on a matter and clears the way for a floor vote, but it requires the assent of 60 senators. Thus a minority of senators are blocking the confirmation of appointees that a majority of senators favor.

Now the Republicans are fighting back. Senate GOP leaders have scheduled 30 hours of debate, starting at 6 tonight and running through midnight tomorrow. The idea is to force the Dems into something resembling an old-fashioned filibuster, to draw public attention to their obstructionism, and perhaps even to force a vote on some of the disputed nominations.

Republicans are unlikely to succeed in that last goal (though The Hill reports that President Bush may sidestep the Senate via recess appointments, which don't require confirmation but would expire at the end of next year). The Dems have a clear tactical advantage, so long as they stick together, and so far 44 of them have been solid in refusing to approve cloture on any of the nominees.

But it strikes us that the Republicans have the strategic advantage. The Dems are fighting a rearguard action that could end up doing them immense political harm.

Let's stipulate that judicial confirmation battles have been a consistent feature of American politics since 1987, during most of which time the president's party did not control the Senate. We'll stipulate further that neither party can claim to be innocent and high-minded; the GOP is vulnerable to charges of unfairness in the way it treated some Clinton nominees.

Even so, the cloture/filibuster strategy does represent an escalation. In 2001-02, when the Democrats held the Senate majority, they used their control of the Judiciary Committee to keep nominees off the floor, something Republicans had done during the Clinton years as well. Never before, though, has a nominee been blocked by a vote of the full Senate despite having the support of the majority of senators.

What will be the political consequences for Democrats? Well, consider what for them would be the most optimistic scenario, in which the Democratic nominee defeats President Bush next year and the Dems also pick up a handful of Senate seats, giving them a slim majority. Suddenly the tables will have turned, and the GOP, following the Democratic precedent, will be filibustering President Dean's nominees. Surely the Dems know this, which leads us to think they don't rate their chances of victory next fall very high.

That the Republicans are trying to raise the public profile of the issue suggests they believe it will work to their political advantage in 2004. They're probably right. "Bush political strategist Karl Rove has blamed a relatively weak turnout of evangelical Christians for Bush's failure to win the popular vote in 2000," notes a Newsday report on the new law banning partial-birth abortion. "He has made energizing these voters a primary goal for next year." The idea of conservatizing the federal bench is the perfect issue to charge up these voters to vote not only for Bush but for Republican Senate candidates.

Countering the religious right, of course, is the irreligious left, but as Nicholas Kristof points out, the latter group is much smaller:

[America's] most striking cleavage is the God Gulf, and it should terrify the Democrats. Put simply, liberals are becoming more secular at a time when America is becoming increasingly religious, the consequence of a new Great Awakening. Americans, for example, are significantly more likely now than in 1987 to say they "completely agree" that "prayer is an important part of my daily life" and that "we all will be called before God on Judgment Day to answer for our sins."

Moreover, those who support groups like People for the American Way and the ACLU are for the most part an educated elite, the kind of people who would tend to vote, and to vote Democratic, no matter what. Thus there probably aren't many votes for the Democrats to gain by blocking these nominees.

There may well, however, be votes for Dems to lose. Oddly, they've picked a very diverse group of nominees to target. Of the four nominees they've bottled up with cloture votes and the two who are in their sights, three are women (Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and Carolyn Kuhl), one is black (Brown), one is Hispanic (Miguel Estrada) and at least three are Catholic (Estrada, Kuhl and Bill Pryor). The only white Protestant male in the bunch is Mississippian Charles Pickering, the Democrats' opposition to whom might have helped elect a GOP governor in his home state last week.

This "rainbow coalition," as an editorial in The Wall Street Journal characterized it, makes it harder to characterize the GOP as the party of bigoted white men, and it makes the party more attractive to those who are uncomfortable voting for a party with a reputation for intolerance. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows that over the past 15 years Republicans have made big gains among Catholics and Hispanics; the Dems' treatment of nominees like Pryor and Estrada won't do anything to reverse this trend.

Black Americans form the one solidly Democratic voting bloc, but even here there is peril for the Democrats' judicial strategy. As we noted Friday, groups that once stood for civil rights now are opposing Janice Rogers Brown precisely because she is black. No, we don't think blacks are going to start voting Republican in significant numbers anytime soon. But campaigning to keep a black woman out of a position of power does not at first glance seem a promising strategy for building black enthusiasm and turnout for Democrats either.

Angry Left Anti-Semitism
Last month we noted several signs of increasing tolerance for anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party, and we worried that the party's angry mood may make it more vulnerable to this form of bigotry. "Not everyone on the Angry Left is anti-Semitic," we wrote, "but a party that stands for nothing other than rage may find it difficult to enforce distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate targets of that rage."

Now we have a perfect storm of Angry Leftism and anti-Semitism, centered on one man: George Soros, the eccentric billionaire who has become a one-man Democratic money machine. Yesterday we noted that Soros has taken to comparing President Bush to Hitler, and last week the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Soros says anti-Semitism is the fault of . . . the Jews and President Bush.

"There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe," Soros, who is himself Jewish, told a conference of the Jewish Funders Network. "The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that." He even blamed himself for anti-Semitism: "I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world," he said. "As an unintended consequence of my actions, I also contribute to that image."

Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, called Soros's remarks "absolutely obscene" and said, "It's blaming the victim for all of Israel's and the Jewish people's ills."

The New York Sun called various Democrats to see if any would denounce Soros's remarks, and found only one, New York's Rep. Eliot Engel, who was willing to do so, calling them "ridiculous and outrageous" and "morally reprehensible." Howard Dean, Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Anthony Weiner were among those who demurred from criticizing Soros.

On the bright side, earlier this week Soros told the Washington Post that defeating President Bush is "the central focus of my life." That means if Bush is re-elected it will disprove the proposition that Jews control the world.

Gore Knocks the Idiot Box
"The 'quasi-hypnotic influence' of television in America has fostered a complacent nation that is a danger to democracy, former Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday," reports the Associated Press:

Gore, speaking on "Media and Democracy" at Middle Tennessee State University, told attendees the decline of newspapers as the country's dominant method of communication leaves average Americans without an outlet for scholarly debate.

"Our democracy is suffering in an age when the dominant medium is not accessible to the average person and does not lend itself most readily to the conveyance of complex ideas about self-governance," Gore said. "Instead it pushes toward a lowest common denominator."

Who ever said Gore was condescending? Fortunately, the ex-veep has a solution: "Gore said a remedy to television's dominance may [be] the Internet, a 'print-based medium that is extremely accessible to the average person.' " That's certainly inventive.

Terror Strikes Italians
The Associated Press reports from Nasiriyah, Iraq, that "a suicide truck bomber attacked the headquarters of Italy's paramilitary police in this southern city on Wednesday, killing 25 people--including 17 Italians--and possibly trapping others in the debris." Three cheers for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whom CNN quotes as saying: "No intimidation will budge us from our willingness to help [Iraq] rise up again and rebuild itself with self-government, security and freedom."

Attacks such as this one are unusual outside Baghdad and the rest of the "Sunni triangle." If it turns out that the attackers came to Nasariyah from the triangle, it may be wise for the coalition to restrict access to the relatively peaceful north and south.

No More Mr. Nice Guy
Coalition forces are getting more aggressive in their efforts to secure Iraq, the Los Angeles Times reports, describing an operation in Mamudiyah, south of Baghdad:

U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police arrived at the sprawling three-family farmhouse just after 4 p.m. with orders for the 15 or so people still living there: Grab what you can in the next 30 minutes, and then leave. Your house is about to be bombed.

Two hours later on Monday, a pair of F-16 warplanes screamed overhead and dropped 1,000-pound laser-guided armaments on the boxy, concrete structure. The bombs left a deep crater strewn with smashed furniture, broken concrete and other debris. The lawn, shed and date trees around it remained intact.

U.S. military authorities said the bombing of the Najim family house was a prime example of a firm new response to those who plant roadside bombs, hide weapons or carry out ambushes that kill or harm American soldiers, and they want the people in these parts to know about it. . . .

"The message is this: If you shoot at an American or a coalition force member, you are going to be killed or you are going to be captured, and if we trace somebody back to a specific safe house, we are going to destroy that facility," said Maj. Lou Zeisman, a paratroop officer of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division deployed here from Fayetteville, N.C. "We are not going to take these continuous attacks."

Hear hear. And let's not hear any more about how Israel is "overreacting" when it does exactly the same thing.

Our Friends the Saudis
Today's Arab News has a tough opinion piece by Raid Qusti titled "Terrorists Are Losing Their Battle." He recounts a conversation with a physician he met at the site of this weekend's bombings in Riyadh:

"Somebody has got to listen to these people--the terrorists--and see what they want. People living in this compound were not Westerners, they were Arabs. Do they think we are infidels because some women here do not cover their hair or wear abayas? If that is the case, there are methods in Islam for propagating your message. Propagation is not blowing up buildings and killing children," he said angrily. As I was leaving I asked myself: "Why did the terrorists target a compound where Arab expatriates lived?"

The fact that they committed these heinous acts in Islam's holy month . . . should leave no one in any doubt that these people are followers of the devil not of God or any religion. One thing is clear. These terrorists are losing their battle. They thought that such attacks and others would make Saudis revolt against the government and our leadership, but what has happened is the exact opposite.

Saudis are more patriotic than ever under the leadership of the country. They are setting aside their differences and are determined to fight one common enemy--extremism.

Let's hope he's right. Not so encouraging is a Newsday report that at least two of the four suicide bombers who attacked the Red Cross and three police stations on Oct. 27 "appear to have been Saudis."

Patriot Games
On at least one issue, Wesley Clark turns out to be to the right of Justice Antonin Scalia. The Boston Globe reports the erstwhile general "said yesterday he would support a constitutional amendment that outlawed desecration of the American flag":

It was the first time Clark had voiced a public opinion on the proposed amendment, and it was news to some of his aides--who quickly said the position was an emotional response.

"The flag is something that is very deep and personal to him, as he has led men into battle and combat under the flag," said Chris Lehane, a Clark communications strategist. . . .

Matt Bennett, Clark's communications director, said Clark saw flag-burning as a "very, very, very particularized form of dissent that he simply can't abide. I guess he is carving out a little bit, but not very much. For the most part he is a very strong proponent of civil liberties."

John Kerry, however, thinks flag-burners should be left to face vigilante justice. "If I saw someone burning the flag, I'd punch them in the mouth because I love that flag," the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, tells the Globe through a spokesman. "But the Constitution I fought for preserves the right of free expression."

Another Two Bite the Dust
"Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's press secretary and deputy finance director quit Tuesday, adding to the bitter turmoil on Kerry's team after the dismissal of his campaign manager," the Associated Press reports. It won't be long before Kerry has destroyed more jobs than Herbert Hoover.

In another effort to revive his flagging campaign, Kerry appeared last night on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno." He didn't get top billing, though; that honor went to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a puppet whose motto is "Come poop with me."

Red Dead on Green
"The head of the Chinese Communist party in Chairman Mao's home town has died on a golf course," London's Daily Telegraph reports. We suppose this is a sign of progress, though the paper adds that his death has prompted "a full investigation into his presence at such a potent symbol of capitalism."

Zero-Tolerance Watch
"Sixteen-year-old Ryan Richter got kicked out of school Monday morning for a stick-figure drawing that another student thought was a violent threat," reports the News-Press of Fort Myers, Fla.:

Richter, a LaBelle High School sophomore, sketched a figure shooting another figure. He did the sketch in a recent geometry class and passed it along to a friend and thought nothing else of it.

The classroom doodling, however, got him suspended for a week and as of Monday's disciplinary hearing, got him kicked out of LaBelle High and recommended for a 45-day stint in Hendry County's alternative high school.

Superintendent Thomas Connor said, in the paper's words, that "school officials take threats of violence seriously." And after all, the pen is mightier than the sword.

Homer Nods
Bart Simpson did not say "Love those sponge baths, 'King-Size Homer,' " on the Nov. 5, 1995, episode of "The Simpsons," as we quoted him in an item yesterday. That comment was an annotation to the script added by the site to which we linked.

You Don't Say
"Committing Suicide While Depressed Is Easier When a Gun Is at Hand"--headline, American Medical News, Nov. 17 issue

Not Too Brite--CXX
Reuters reports from Chicago that "a woman poisoned her husband and put his body in the garage while she went about getting her hair done and handing out Halloween candy, police alleged on Tuesday."

Oddly Enough!

The World's Smallest Violin
CNET News picked an odd aspect to emphasize in a story yesterday: "Microsoft released three security updates for the Windows operating system and one update for Office, leaving many federal system administrators with no choice but to work on a U.S. national holiday." Imagine that--federal workers having to work! How many nongovernmental employees get Veterans Day off?

Banana Splits
"The Rev. Canaan Banana, Zimbabwe's first post-independence president, who was convicted and jailed for sodomy, died Monday after a long illness," Reuters reports. Banana, who was 67, had been accused by a former aide of having drugged and raped him. "Mr. Banana insisted throughout the case that he was not a homosexual and said the accusations against him were part of a vendetta." Not that Banana didn't have a certain appeal.

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Can Riyadh reform before the House of Saud falls?
• Frederick Kagan: Donald Rumsfeld means business. That's a problem.
• David Littlejohn: A visit to Disney's new Philharmonic Fantasyland.